Michael Quattrone’s poems are impressively various. Some younger
poets paint themselves into a corner, following one mentor or school without
having sampled enough of the field. Quattrone is his
own man, and the proof is that his poems embrace such a wide range of impulses,
forms, tones, and subjects. He may derive one poem from a newspaper article,
another from the elaboration of a trope, a third from the structure of an
inventory. He is a poet of “existential paranoia” but in
another mood he is lustily high-spirited, and he can also write unabashedly
about the love of a father for his young daughter. The form is suitable to the
occasion, as the elegy for John Berryman (“January 7, 1972") apes the voice of that underrated poet. And if one poem
employs an ironic persona, there is nothing reflexive about the irony, and it
will not stop the poet from writing other poems in a quiet truth-telling mode,
unafraid of sentiment, wishing he “could explain before it grows too late the
shifts / I cannot explain before it’s too, too late. Later
/ even than I had originally imagined when / it was not yet too late.
Before I recognized I / did not know what everything
meant.”

A rhinoceros in a
rose garden, I ruminate, take no steps.I bow my horn before the bees and tolerate the birds who
perch, enjoy the company.I eye the
action, pound the ground, chew air, snore loudly and sleep on my feet.Sometimes nothing happens.Sometimes winds blow.I thank them, take credit, or forget.I want a cigarette, but fear embarrassment.I am a rhinoceros: no smoke, no fire.I stare toward winter.

I indulge in
fantasy.At times I adorn myself with
tusks.The earth hardens beneath
me.It rains, I repel water.I have back pain, I grimace.There is a song stuck in my head.I stopped singing it.I hate that song.

Rose bushes sway
like clouds, bob like buoys, blush like daughters, slump
like rhinos.They effervesce at
dawn.My lids fly at half-mast.Suspicions?Paranoia?Lethargy?Defeat?I thrive here.I try to slough off self-pity.Ever seen a rhinoceros yawn?Stretch?

I do not move in
moonlight or try to tiptoe.I bathe in obscurity, wish someone would notice, bring in a
helicopter.Winter hastens.The earth churns up a stepping stone. Patience works.Evolution: all that follows is a
weight-bearing exercise, a physics experiment.Balance, a demand for grace.

I will return to
the roses.It’s inevitable.Next year I might learn to jump or grow
feathers, who knows?I am familiar with
myself by now.Also, I surprise
myself.There is something to be said
for each.And there is something to be
said for roses.

three

The way the rain
makes dark objects shine,

and other methods of
evoking love and loss.

The way light casts
invisible beams, not like

the rafters of a barn,
dark wood exposed,

but like a honey
colored pane seen only

when reflected by the floating
dust or smoke.

The way absence can
undo the face.Smoke

from a cigarette wafts
in your eyes that way—

the same way onions
seep their juice inside

your brain and coax its
citrus from your ducts.

These are the ways
I am finding to love you

and fear, already at
the beginning, your loss.

The way you slipped
into this world through a cut,

the way I will cut
myself out of it to tell the tale.

The way I do not
know what everything means,

or even most of
it.None, in fact.No word

or tune, no shade of any
color.The way I wish

I could explain
before it grows too late the shifts

I cannot explain
before it’s too, too late.Later

even than I had
originally imagined when

it was not yet too
late.Before I recognized I

did not know what
everything meant.That way—

or how confusion can
seem shameful, bad;

or how badness eats
at us, we eat ourselves;

or how we do not
eat.How we grow hungry,

ever more hungry at the
thought of death.

The way the rain
makes dark objects glisten,

the way you slipped into
this world through a cut.

The way I will cut
myself out of it to tell the tale,

and other methods of
evoking love and fear.

The ways I am
casting your brain at the beginning,

the rafters of a barn,
the dice of a kitchen knife

the way I had
originally imagined.Or else the way

we long to lick dark
objects for their juices,

or eat the cigarette
of any color, coax its smoke

into the honey colored
light from your ducts—

or even most of it,
in fact, dark wood exposed

before it wafts
away.Not like a word, an onion,

an invisible cut
reflected by the floating dust.

These are the ways
I am finding to love you,

or how confusion can
seem shameful, bad.

The way your brain
knows everything I mean.

underground conversation

fromThe New York Times

BEIJING, April 24—

A hundred cell phones bloom,

A hundred
honeysuckle throats

Sing out: sap
sprung from one

Hundred
retractable stamens.

It is the season of
protest.

A hundred cell phones bloom,

And Chinese take to
the streets.

Americans stay home:
the pursed

Tulips of Park Avenue are loud

And colorful, as
bright as bulbs

Buried
in median sod.

A hundred cell phones bloom

To riot, pollinate
Red China,

Make the
International Noise.

The march of April
is the rage:

Witness Ukraine’s Orange

Revolution, the
conspiracy of

Violet, her
subversive cohorts

Mobilized.

A hundred cell phones bloom,

Unchoked by government
plants.

Not plucked out at
the roots,

Not nipped in buds,
they inflame!

The public buzz
will burn a secret

Ring around the
modern world.

Will we remember this?

The generation when
we all

Carried flowers in
our pockets,

In
our holsters.

Jim Yardley contributed reporting

for this
article.

Inventory

Twelve dark woods—

aspen, yellow, Italian,
willow . . . ;

One hundred small black birds in flight;

The usual shuffling of dawns & nights;

A sheaf of papers, postage stamps—

between pages four &
five, one dead

dragonfly;

Several paths, some taken, some untrod—

many narrow, forked
and winding;

& the moon a-makin’
all

those pretty phases down
on us;

Three or four crashed cars; A nation full

of adolescents,
ill-equipped and unrequited;

A miscellany of old objects—

lots the size of fists;

& other relics—one Greek urn, an
albatross,

the fossil of a cat, a
pretty shield,

some mind-forged
manacles

from across the pond
(rusted, strong);

Volumes; Volumes untranslated
&

A single jar, ambiguous & round;

Also,
a fish, or sixty-six;

Fifty swaddled infants, none alike—

sleeping, crying, cold or hungry,

bedded down upon four dozen

wildflower nests, most wet with dew;

Some scores of riflemen, their faces
charred—

anesthetized by
pirates’ casks of rum;

The pirate ship on which the rum was run—

including sails & miles of rope

and a busty figurehead, to promise hope;

One signet ring that once was worn with
pride—

some shallow scratches on its underside;

One Bible & one
printing press.

A thousand thousand
leaves—

of paper, grass and also

trees,
goodbyes . . . ;

No memories, but tarnished mirrors—

harmoniously framed;

An orgone box; A power saw; A shotgun;

Tack and saddle, battle leggings—

in fact an armory entire,

transcontinental, old & new,

most origins unknown;

Bamboo shoots & river reeds;

Scrollwork from dead dynasties;

The Pyramids; The
Holy Grail;

Five million television sets—

no black-&-whites;

One pail of seashells; Shovelfuls of sand;

Water—more than can

conceivably be measured

by the mind of man;

A buzzing fly; A
coffin lid; One can of worms;

Two katydids; A
colander & Forty mice;

Existential paranoia; Tuneless instruments;

Orchestral staves—

composed in minor & in
major keys;

Eighty tons of eggshells, not one egg;

Two plastic models of the brain and heart;

Enough roses to choke a large rhinoceros to
death;

A large rhinoceros, possibly dying;

One rubber chicken; One
red herring;

Ten modern works of art on auto parts;

A gramophone, a telegraph, a metronome;

An epitaph carved nicely on a stone—

these things &
others here,

left unrecorded by
constraint of space,

may be reclaimed at the
eleventh hour:

knock twice upon the
window, once the ground,

go quickly then &
silently

around the back &
there the door

will open unexpectedly
below the floor;

your identity will be
confirmed,

the thing you lost,
expediently found

and so returned—

Proof
of ownership shall be required.

Memo

is my poem about the
hemorrhoids a fortunate happenstance or do

you fib when you say
you admire gentle ass-poetics on a leash of

these burgundy flounder
truffles I daily bind with straps of fuscia taffeta
to the holistic

fundamentalist trinity of my cock
and balls? or were you joshua-ing
me you jerichobean jerk-off reference-

maker—gone in a hazel
misted orbit round the weathered friends of planetoid

erstwhile—psychoanalysis sodomizes all my soft fleshy particles of faith in

ten doses of the best
blue-blooded amphetamine-stapled gas relief medication as in the battle

of a dirty dozen bioflavors in the sweetness of your cherry shaped from the
outside anyway mouth

when I repeatedly say
the reveries of the rich are for the foolish enough to believe them for

instance camel dung was
supposed to be a healing remedy for desert herpes pustules

affordable less than my rent
however ‘nice’ it was of my grandmother to die a little early

in a building that
allows me to lecture on pet-care ethics every thursday
in the entryway by the mailboxes

I meant to qualify simplex f above and
below I will continue to qualify until you tell me yes

the aquarium octopi have
wrung you free of megatons of self-pity and the relentless

despising of others to the
point of near self-publication and licking of my own peach fuzzy

nipples in as gratuitous a
manner as any head cheerleader could muster evidently airborne?

can you radiate the
rational assessment of incestuous efficiency from beneath such perspiration

you pigeon feathered
motherfucker? or not?myshrinkologist
knows the difference between

what I want and what
I’m actually able to accomplish as long as I mentally keep translucent

suspender pincers fastened
to my fascinating scrotum sack prosthetic and designed by class

advisors to the elephant’s
ace-bandage security team—they know me from way back

when in forgone
conclusive egotism I hopped into a centrifuge to perm my pubes

since then I’ve embarked
on fragmented episodes of post-ecological haberdashery

financed by a large bird
named Pad Thai fuck the decree about proper nouns however capitalistic

who refuses to speak
to me in sign language inscribed on the fossilized egg you devoured

piecemeal in lieu of
scrambling the satellite radio waves forever lost like pigs in space

cordoned off by
contemptible authorities on nougat plundering the way I like it

soft and creamy with a spanking
triggered by riotous laughter of phantasmagoric pointillism

o no I’m late for my
legacy waxing salon accompanied by philologism
canapés